It took centuries for the Byzantine Empire to fall. In fact, Constantinople was sacked on 4 separate occasions: in 1081 when Alexios I Komnenos wrested power from Nykephoros III Botaneiates, in 1204 when the Latins — agents of the Holy Roman Emperor in Rome — took the city from the Byzantines, in 1261 when the Nicaeans under Michael VII Palaiologos retook the city and made it once again the seat of the Empire, and then in 1453 when Sultan Mehmed II finally ended the Roman Empire for once and all time.
I have been thinking about the process by which the Empire failed, and trying to contextualize what happened nearly six hundred years ago against what is happening here and now, in the US. There are a few points I linger over: things that cause me both trepidation and hope.
When Alexios came to power, some of the factors that led to the demise of the Empire were already in place. The Empire had been stable for centuries in part because succession to the throne was generally orderly. Alexios took power by coup: he had been a successful general, and from that platform was able to raise enough support from the army to mount an attack on the capital. For most of the history of the Empire to that point, civilian and military leadership had been kept separate. Alexios was one of a stream of Generals to have risen to power in the years preceding his ascension to the throne. One thing that can be said of Alexios is that he fostered a period of apparent stability: he himself held power for almost 40 years, and his next two successors had similar reigns.
In addition to altering the power structure of the Empire, Alexios also created a situation, out of apparent necessity, which contributed greatly to the eventual demise of the Empire. The Emperor Nykephoros, whom he had supplanted, had drained the Empire’s finances. At the time that Alexios took power, the Empire was facing an invasion threat from Robert Guiscard, a Norman who had risen to power on the Italian peninsula and then set his sites on the throne of the Byzantine Empire. In order for Alexios to meet the threat of invasion by Guiscard, he had to negotiate help from another foreign power: the Venetians, who had a substantial navy. He made certain promises to them, including the privilege of importing and exporting goods to Constantinople without paying any tax. The Venetians also gained control of a section of the capital. Eventually, similar deals were made with other Italian city-states, including the Genoans, and the Pisans. This caused the Empire to lose a crucial revenue stream, and they were never able to recover from the loss. In the end, it also gave the Latins entrée into the city so that they could take it from the Byzantines themselves in 1204: the second sacking of Constantinople.
Yet even from this, the Empire was eventually able to reconstitute itself for a time. Remember: they were Romans. That identity sustained them through some serious crises, and even an apparent collapse. I don’t wish to draw the parallel too closely, but my take on this story includes the suggestion that a great country like the Byzantine Empire, or the United States, does not fall easily or quickly.
That demise the Byzantines ultimately faced at the hands of the Ottoman Turks was centuries in the making. Perhaps the alarmists and naysayers in our own time are too pessimistic. Perhaps this country is not so near its end as they might suspect. And perhaps, given the will and the force of commitment to our better natures and our strengths as a nation, we might yet survive and even thrive in the coming centuries.
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